


Cheating Hearts

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Rydell, Ficlet, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We repeat the mistakes our parents made; try as we may.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheating Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Written: September 2007; prompt: 'cheating'.

As a child, Dan often used to wake in the night to the sound of yelling from downstairs. At first he would just lie still, pillow pulled over his head to block out the sound, rigid, fighting back tears. Later on, curiosity would overcome him and he'd slip out of bed and creep to the head of the stairs, crouching behind the banisters, straining his ears to try to make sense of the muffled shouts and accusations until David would come and find him and pull him away with a cuff to the head and a muttered, "Back to bed, Squirt."

It wasn't until a long time later, not until he was almost in his teens, that he connected his parents' fighting to the constant cast changes in their ongoing family drama – nannies, maids, his father's secretaries, his mother's best friends appeared, vanished, and were replaced over and over again, always without warning – and came up with a solution that seemed to make sense. He blamed his father; hated him for the hurt he was causing. How (Dan thought), how could anyone be unfaithful to his mother, beautiful and kind and loving as she was? So when, downtown one day, hanging at the mall with his friends, he saw a familiar silhouette through a coffee shop window and watched in dismay as his mother's lips drew closer and then closer yet to a complete stranger's, he found his world turned upside-down.

It wasn't just his parents. David, popular and handsome, straight-A student and High School football star, kept a steady stream of girls on their toes, scattering promises like confetti, promises that he never had the slightest thought of keeping. Their sister was as bad; on Prom night, no fewer than three painstakingly tuxedoed young men appeared on their doorstop, only to find that Karen had climbed out of her window and run away without a thought or a care.

Dan vowed to himself that he would never be like them: never lie like them, never cheat, never hurt the people he loves. Easy for a child to say, with a child's clear-eyed certainty of right and wrong. As an adult, that certainty blurs, becomes the victim of expedience. He sins in minor ways; he smiles and is charming to network suits at corporate dinners, he feigns enthusiasm for sports about which neither he nor anyone else in the world gives a good goddamn. But there are some things he holds too dear to his heart ever to make into a lie.

That's why, with all the women he's dated, he has never once said 'I love you' - not even to Rebecca, and he would have said it to Rebecca if he could have said it to anyone at all. The best he could ever have told any one of them is 'You'll always be second best, and that'll have to do,' and who, in the name of god, who needs to hear _that?_

He could say 'I love you'; given the right time, the right place, the perfect opportunity. Given the one person to whom he could say it – given that person being willing to hear. One day, maybe, he will do.

And if that day ever comes, he'll say it, and mean it, and he'll stand by it for as long as the both of them live.

***


End file.
